Ad of the Day: Canon

The world is filled with beautiful moments worth capturing. You just have to see them. Also, buy a Canon Rebel T4i camera and carry it with you all the time. That way, whenever inspiration strikes, you'll be ready to snap a photo you can save forever. Also, Canon will sell more Canon Rebels.

A new ad for the brand from Grey in New York features a montage of adventurous photographers braving environmental hazards to get that special shot. The spot does a particularly nice job of portraying the product users as the heroes of the story: Their antics are by varying degrees entertaining (trying to outrun a charging giraffe, staring down an irate fishmonger) and stupid-dangerous (climbing to the edge of an icy roof to get a better angle on the kid making snow angels in an empty pool). The resulting pictures are all marvelous, and so is the filming of the spot itself, showing all the right attention to detail—e.g., the birthday girl's sideway glance when her mom nonchalantly sweeps a bowl off the table to get it out of the frame.

The director, Nicolai Fuglsig, also shot Fallon's famous Sony Bravia "Balls" spot. He appears to have an affinity for steep roads and the effects of gravity on unusual objects—in that case innumerable bouncy balls, and in this case a flaming tire.

The soundtrack is Rachel Fannan of the California rock group Only You singing a charmingly understated version of the easily mawkish classic "Beautiful Dreamer," and it's pretty much perfect for the spot. Canon or someone should probably post or sell the whole song somewhere obvious soon. People are going to want to hear it.

Figuring out how exactly the lofty tagline, "Long live imagination," ties into an ad about making concrete records of inspiring moments may take a few steps of abstraction. But in the end, it does make sense, and the conceit, with all its overtones of creativity and immortality, is pretty much dead-on for an ad aimed at people who want to be artists.

The world is filled with beautiful moments worth capturing. You just have to see them. Also, buy a Canon Rebel T4i camera and carry it with you all the time. That way, whenever inspiration strikes, you'll be ready to snap a photo you can save forever. Also, Canon will sell more Canon Rebels.

A new ad for the brand from Grey in New York features a montage of adventurous photographers braving environmental hazards to get that special shot. The spot does a particularly nice job of portraying the product users as the heroes of the story: Their antics are by varying degrees entertaining (trying to outrun a charging giraffe, staring down an irate fishmonger) and stupid-dangerous (climbing to the edge of an icy roof to get a better angle on the kid making snow angels in an empty pool). The resulting pictures are all marvelous, and so is the filming of the spot itself, showing all the right attention to detail—e.g., the birthday girl's sideway glance when her mom nonchalantly sweeps a bowl off the table to get it out of the frame.

The director, Nicolai Fuglsig, also shot Fallon's famous Sony Bravia "Balls" spot. He appears to have an affinity for steep roads and the effects of gravity on unusual objects—in that case innumerable bouncy balls, and in this case a flaming tire.

The soundtrack is Rachel Fannan of the California rock group Only You singing a charmingly understated version of the easily mawkish classic "Beautiful Dreamer," and it's pretty much perfect for the spot. Canon or someone should probably post or sell the whole song somewhere obvious soon. People are going to want to hear it.

Figuring out how exactly the lofty tagline, "Long live imagination," ties into an ad about making concrete records of inspiring moments may take a few steps of abstraction. But in the end, it does make sense, and the conceit, with all its overtones of creativity and immortality, is pretty much dead-on for an ad aimed at people who want to be artists.